Merry Christmas to everyone! It’s been a while since my last post because I’ve been on holiday from Artlink. There should be more Artlink stuff up in a week or so. For know here’s a short story I wrote 🙂

Waltzing The Minotaur

Everyone knows that there’s something else. Even on the nicest of days, the suns shining and the sky’s all blue and warm and the clouds fluffy like cotton, even on these days everyone knows there’s something else. Even since the days of the Greeks and the Romans, there’s been something else. It’s human nature to look beyond the clouds, past the sky, through the thick blanket of trees and sky and cloud and space and to see the invisible. It’s human nature, human nature to see more than a picket fence in a suburb, to see more than a smile, more than a headshake. When we awake from the hot-flash of our dreams and flail  and struggle to find which the tear between reality and dream, flail, flail, flailing our arms, lost in the sea, we know there is something more…

I’m lying back, pressing down the blades of grass which tickle my back, begging me to get up. The sky’s all blue again and the sweltering heat is more humid than anything. Everyone’s all serene and calm, on the quilted blankets, slouching, limply like dead wasps. This place is like the dessert, with all the white skin carcasses lying sizzling like bits of bacon in a big pan. I can hear the gentle swish, swish, swish of people’s thoughts, calm, calm, and serene, like the gentle buzz and hum and overspill of a leaky radiator. In my mind the race continues…

There’s these two parts of me, see. There’s one part like everyone’s, calm, calm, serene, and there’s this other part that’s forever a-poke, poke prodding me, rubbing my pride with sandpaper, telling me I can’t can’t, can’t. It’s always there, lurking in the shadows of the maze of my mind, bang, bang, banging at the walls and bustling to be free. The tighter you chain him, the more he struggles. I’m probably being selfish to think that it’s only me who has it, everyone does to a greater or lesser extent, it’s the human condition and it’s always there, in the shadows on the blue sky-est of days. It’s been there since the dawn of time, it’s the residue from the original sin, a product of mans ability to think. The greatest challenge for man is to rid himself of this beast, throw the shackles off and watch the beast co-exist peacefully with his fellow man, the shadow and the light side by side…for even the clouds make shadows in the sky….

Anyway, I’m here on this day, slouching like a dead bumble bee on the lawn, the gentle humswish of people’s thoughts like a washing machine, the warmest of blue skies and the fattest of cotton wool clouds suffocating the sky. My minds racing, following a piece of string through its own maze tirelessly. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Strangers blaze a golden trail to nowhere on the tarry concrete, never crossing my path, never entering my life, I can hear their thoughts too, a-humhumbuzzing away, I see there faces melt down the road, just like I see a face at the window of every flat and every high rise, looking down as I look up, looking so forlorn, a seal trapped in a big metal and glass aquarium, staring down at me like he thinks I’m in the big blue sea. I can’t I can’t I can’t. Round here this park is like one bit left un-injected, the one bit of solitude in this city full of people suffocating there desires and their wives. And it’s hardly much of a solitude. Round here in this city it’s like the seventh circle of hell. I moved here to get away from it, to run away from it all and I ended up coming full circle and bumping right into the back of my problems.  In the horizon, I see the city landscape cut into gods canvas, I see the corners licked by the grey of the smoke puffing and seeping from factory chimneys. I can’t I can’t I can’t…

I close my eyes, try to drive the darkness to the bottom of my mind, try to let the sunlight flood in, calm, calm, serene. I try to make my body feel light, floating, like a water vapour, to be at peace with myself, with everything around me. I breathe, feeling the cool air dive through my nostrils and clean my mind as if it were a dirty oven shelf. I feel calm, calm…I can’t I can’t, the beast lurking rises violently to the surface causing me to clench my fists and screw my eyes shut…

I open my eyes, sunlight blazing a hole through my irises, seeing the park like a kind of cemetery. I feel possessed, my muscles feel tighter and the trees sway despite the absence of a breeze. I feel myself blink and rise in the dazzling light, slowly my muscles begin to move in a sore and careful jive. I trip and dance around the thoughts of a million men, humhumbuzzing away. The park is empty despite the people lying letting this life wash over them like a tide.  I dance my way, as if controlled by invisible strings, towards the throbbing  city. I follow through the maze of traffic and people I have never met, follow the string deeper into the maze. I follow the trail of the beast that I can never find, he hides behind my pride, I dance and pivot, despite the bright light, I have no eyes. I embrace the beast as he and I become one, slowly waltzing through taxis cabs, solicitors offices, ATM’s. We waltz through picket fences and middle class children playing in the yard, through the dingy bars and women scantly clad stooping in the corner. I feel his husky breathe upon my neck and his rough hands on mine, I stare into his eyes, reflections of my own. We waltz and waltz and …My timber limbs creak and groan through the light until it slowly fades like hope, the waxy streetlights buzz and flicker and the curtains draw, The sirens still stare from top floor windows and the starlight rains down like tiny shards of glass…My limbs dance, following a beat I cannot hear, the lyrics I chant are, I can’t I can’t…

I awake and the sunlight is dying like a flower, retreating behind the hardness of metal and concrete. I shake off the fragments of a dream, searching for my scope, for reality. The park is now almost empty, apart from the odd passer by melting into grey. I lie where I fell asleep, my back is damp through and I realise it’s been raining. I feel the thin blades of rain pierce my cold, clay like skin and I shiver. I can feel the raindrops, feel them, feel them, Feel them, every one. I hear no voice in my head and my ear is free and clear and clean, to hear the sounds of every disgruntled cabdriver and marital dispute shivering through the glass of an apartment. The sound of the city is beautiful, a delicate eco system, a jungle made of concrete and wire, this is my jungle…I draw open my lips and laugh….

I walk home, feeling the raindrop every step, the soft humbuzzing coming from me oozing to fill the cracks in the pavement. The I can’t’s trail behind my ankles, beating a soft yet persistent tune. I feel alive, and to be alive, I know there is always something else…

This beast he wants to waltz in the sterile sunlight, with the head of a bull and the body of a man… I follow him through the city until the damp lamplight comes on and the curtains are drawn, I will dance with this beast forever more, this beast I call the Minotaur…